41-Love Read online

  41–Love

  ALSO BY SCARLETT THOMAS

  FICTION

  Our Tragic Universe

  The End of Mr. Y

  PopCo

  Going Out

  Bright Young Things

  The Seed Collectors

  Oligarchy

  NONFICTION

  Monkeys with Typewriters

  41–LOVE

  On Addictions, Tennis,

  and Refusing to Grow Up

  Scarlett Thomas

  COUNTERPOINT

  Berkeley, California

  For Rod, with love

  Though we would never wish the poisonous red shoes and the subsequent decrease of life onto ourselves or others, there is in its fiery and destructive center a something that fuses fierceness to wisdom in the woman who has danced the cursed dance, who has lost herself and her creative life, who has driven herself to hell in a cheap (or expensive) handbasket, and yet who has somehow held on to a word, a thought, an idea until she could escape her demon through a crack in time and live to tell about it.

  —CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  The Indoor Tennis Centre

  Leicester

  Ragdale Hall

  The Indoor Tennis Centre Open

  Wolverhampton

  Bath

  Sutton

  The Canterbury Open

  Nottingham

  The Walmer Open

  Seniors’ Wimbledon

  Postscript

  Acknowledgments

  41–Love

  Prologue

  You can only start at the beginning if you know what the beginning is, but maybe this will do. It’s a Wednesday in July 2013. I’ve arrived at the Indoor Tennis Centre for a tennis lesson. I last had a tennis lesson when I was fourteen, far away in the sweltering heat of Mexico, not long before I gave up playing seriously forever. I have just turned forty-one. I am wearing blue cotton Adidas shorts and a striped cotton tank top I hope doesn’t make me look fat. I won’t wear cotton for very long in this story—indeed, I will have to move on to “performance” fabrics quite soon—but it is how I begin. I have an old tennis racquet that cost about £25 from a funny little shop in Canterbury. The coach is a large, cheerful guy who is bouncing around teaching some kid, with brightly colored hoops and targets everywhere. He is running so late I almost say something—almost, but not quite. I am trying not to feel intimidated. This place is huge. Serious. Professional. Everything’s green and smells of rubber or acrylic. There is a bulletin board with team lists printed on it. Ladies 1. Mixed 1. Ladies 2. Imagine . . . But I don’t let myself. Not yet.

  My turn, at last. I have no idea how much is wrong with the way I hit the ball. My whole technique is modeled on the way the cool older guys used to play at the local hard courts in Chelmsford when I was a kid. Flat, low, skimming the net. Nowadays everyone plays the ball earlier, harder, with topspin. But I don’t yet know any of this. I am just pleased that I can hit the ball at all, that I can keep a rally going with this coach.

  I stand a long way behind the baseline, waiting for the ball to come to me. It flies through the air (spinning over and over itself, although I cannot yet read spin), then bounces: beautiful, poetic, mathematical, as if all the laws of the universe were distilled into this one simple movement. It hits the ground, arcs, peaks, and then begins to drop. It’s at the very last moment that I hit it, trying to remember what I learned all those years ago about “following through.” I’m fast around the court, and I get to every ball, but I don’t yet realize that this coach, Dan, is playing easy for me, playing down to me, because at this moment for him I am some random woman who has come along to maybe improve her game enough to be allowed to play with her husband, or her slightly better friend, or to join some social tennis club.

  Of course my ambitions are greater than this, my ambitions that will soon build and eventually collapse like a vast, terrifying avalanche. At this moment, though, I just want to impress him. Embarrassingly, bizarrely, I want him to declare that he’s never seen anyone so talented in all his years of coaching and . . . I don’t know. Ask me to come back? Ask me to train for one of the teams? Just to praise one of my shots would be a start.

  On the next court a younger, thinner blond coach is feeding balls from a basket to a dark-haired woman who keeps laughing and missing her shots. I am better than her, I think. I am not the worst person in here. Their session ends before ours, and the blond guy grins and apologizes as he walks behind me with his basket of balls and his beaten-up old Dunlop racquet with the leather grip that I will later learn makes his fingers bleed when he plays in tournaments. The woman follows him, still laughing. Dan calls to her, something like, “How did you get on?” and she says, “Oh, I beat him again and he just can’t handle it.” It’s pretty clear that he has let her win. Is this what coaches do with ladies who have £25 to spare for a lesson with them? Immediately, a yearning begins in me. One day I’m going to beat one of these coaches for real. I want to face one of these guys as their equal. I want them to want to hit with me.

  A year or so later, when I am training for Seniors’ Wimbledon, hitting with Dan as a friend, as his mixed doubles partner, he will look at me and say, “Did you have any idea, on that first day you came in here, that first session you had with me? Did you even think that you’d be here, that you’d have achieved all of this?” Of course I did—sort of—but I won’t say that. By then I’ll be thinking that whatever I achieve isn’t good enough, and I’ll be wracked with doubts and terrors and problems with my forehand, with my desperate need to win.

  As I leave after that first session with my cheap racquet in my cheap bag, walking up the stairs feeling happy and complete in some way I haven’t experienced for a long time, aching to play again as soon as possible but with various muscles beginning to go into spasm, I realize that someone’s running up the stairs behind me. It’s the blond guy. The other coach.

  “You were hitting the ball nicely down there,” he says.

  “Thanks,” I say. And then: “I’m Scarlett, by the way.”

  “Josh,” he says. “See you again soon, I hope.”

  He passes me, and carries on running to wherever he’s going.

  1

  The Indoor Tennis Centre

  It is December 21, 2013. I am forty-one years old and I am just about to play in my first tennis competition. I’ve been half-joking, or maybe let’s say three-quarters-joking, for the last few weeks that I am going to win this, the Indoor Tennis Centre Christmas Tournament Ladies’ Singles. I have read books (always the first thing I do), weight-trained, studied strategy, watched tennis matches on YouTube. Initially, maybe back in November, I told myself, and my partner Rod, that I was going to win. But I didn’t completely believe it, and as the thing approached I realized I was mad to think of victory, especially as one of the entrants—the favorite, in fact—was a teenage tennis star with a coach, supportive parents, and a string of victories behind her. When I looked at the list of entrants with my coach, Dan, he simply shook his head and said, “You’ll have trouble beating her.”

  I’ve been playing tennis again for almost six months and I don’t understand why I am not better. I mean, I’m good. I know that. Inside my head I’m really, really good, but my inner picture has not yet translated to actual results. I’ve played a couple of disastrous league matches by now and become a regular at Dan’s Monday-night “Recreational Session.” These would be called club nights, except the Indoor Tennis Centre isn’t a club, as such: it’s a pay-and-play, council-run center that you can’t join, exactly, but it does have teams. The Reccy sessions are clique-y and weird and I occasionally cry when I come home after them. Hayley, Dan’s mixed doubles partner, is clearly his favorite. She hits the ball hard, and she knows how to do topspin. Then there’s a bunch of large, confident women who hit the ball extremely hard and occasionally do drive volleys. And on the next court Becky Carter has her weekly coaching session with Josh.

  The first time I saw Becky Carter I almost passed out with jealousy. She walked into the tennis center with a racquet handle sticking out of her backpack and everything, everything, from the angle of the racquet handle, to her sexy-naïve smile, to her blonde hair done up in a scruffy ponytail, was so perfect I wanted to die. Everyone was so pleased to see her. She’d been out with some kind of injury and this was her first session back. She was wearing little shorts with a tight top that showed her flat, muscular stomach. When she started hitting the ball with Josh it was like some flying martial arts film. She almost seemed like his equal. I wanted to do what she was doing so much that my brain couldn’t understand that I wasn’t in fact doing it. Of course, she has not entered the Christmas Tournament. Why would she?

  My first match in the Christmas Tournament is against Karen, who has, she tells me, just been to do her family’s weekly shop in Sainsbury’s. To prepare for today, I have spent the previous day in a spa, had a full-body massage and a steam bath, drunk only two small glasses of red wine in the evening—although admittedly while sitting on a very hard chair for a long evening of performances based on Dickens at the local theatre—eaten two eggs for breakfast along with my usual “primal cereal,” and done some visualization and, OK, a little bit of praying to the universe. I meant to meditate, but didn’t. I have, however, watched a lot of videos of Federer on YouTube. I love his backhand. It’s one-handed, like mine. I have read and reread The Inner Game of Tennis, probably my favorite tennis book. It tells you to let go, relax, breathe, and let the my
sterious inner part of you it calls “Self 2” play the game while you distract your ego by trying to read the writing on the tennis ball as it comes over the net toward you.

  My initial mistake is in thinking that the fact that I have done all this and Karen has been to Sainsbury’s means that I will win easily. I’m much more worried about Amie Tonkiss, the teenage tennis queen. But to be honest, I’m nervous as hell about the whole thing. I haven’t really thought through my strategy, but if I had to put it into words, it would be something like “Keep getting the ball back and wait for your opponent to make a mistake.” This is not the strategy I plan to take through my year of tennis (and at this moment I don’t yet know I am going to have a year of tennis, nor that this is going to take me to the very brink of existence and sanity), but it is my strategy, sort of, for the Indoor Tennis Centre Christmas Tournament 2013. The only problem is that this is clearly also Karen’s strategy. And she is just as patient and accurate as I am.

  Another problem is that being careful and accurate is not much fun. There’s no pace on the ball as it just plomps over the net and plomps back. I hit the ball so much harder in practice, with my male coach. I know that inside I have a game that is more aggressive, in which I hit harder, deeper, ground strokes that will force a shorter ball, which I can use to approach the net. But when I half-heartedly try this, my approach shot is weak. Karen, a good doubles player, just lobs me.

  Those two glasses of wine the night before have made me dehydrated. It’s too early for me. I don’t usually play tennis at 10:00 a.m. I like playing at approximately 3:00 p.m., which is when I have my weekly session with Dan Brewer, head coach at the Indoor Tennis Centre. I hit long and hard with him, but for some reason these rallies are leaving me gasping not just for water but for air. I’ve had way too much breakfast. The energy bars I brought with me are like 90 percent nuts. I can’t digest nuts in this situation! After one long tiring point, I think I am going to throw up. I bend down to pretend to tie my shoelace just to give myself a moment to breathe. I am tanking. I am, possibly, dying. I have the beginnings of a blister that means I won’t be able to walk tomorrow.

  Karen wins the first three games. This is it. I am fucked.

  My partner Rod is sitting at a green plastic table just beyond the tramlines, watching me play tennis for the first time ever. He is literally on the edge of his seat, although this isn’t a very close match so far. He said that watching me play tennis would make him feel a bit like he does watching New Zealand’s All Blacks, which is good. The other sport he gets very emotionally involved in is cricket, and at this point I’d rather be the New Zealand rugby team than its cricket team. But the All Blacks always win, or at least they have all the way through 2013, and here I am in what so far feels more like New Zealand’s historic cricketing defeat in 1955, when they were bowled out for 26 (and which traumatized Rod for life). But what can I do? Karen is just playing very steadily. The rallies are punishing and they are long. I’m getting the ball back, I’m keeping it in, but it isn’t working. I know I am better than this. Vague memories from childhood come wafting back. Was I always like this? Was I always better in practice than in matches and was that one of the reasons why . . . ?

  After the third game changeover, I remind myself to do some basic things. Hit deeper, and more often to her backhand. Serve deep, too. Stay on my toes. I am still effectively a beginner and do not know even half the strategy I will know by the end of January, let alone what I will know by the end of next year. I have no second serve. No two-handed backhand. (I think my one-hander is pretty awesome, but the score-line begs to differ. Later in the year, Josh, my new coach, will just laugh at it.) But despite the better-in-practice thing, I do have a sort of history of winning singles matches. After all, I do have a natural ability for this beautiful game that I turned my back on so long ago, when I was fourteen and far from home, on a boarding school tennis court with Madonna hair and the wrong accent. I can see patterns in things. I “just know” where to hit the ball. I have recently beaten the local hard-hitter and queen-of-the-frightening-volley 6–2 in a practice game in which I definitely thought I’d be crushed. I thrashed a steady male club player 6–1. So why am I losing to someone who has just been round Sainsbury’s?

  I don’t know how, but I take the next game. And the next one. Sometimes it’s just about deciding that you really want this thing rather than some other thing. I am going to win this tennis tournament, I tell the universe. And if I am going to win the tournament, I need to win this set, this game, this point. The universe sighs and I draw level, but then Karen wins the next game, taking her to 4–3. I take the next game, and the next one. It’s 5–4. I’m serving for the match, but I can’t do it. We’re level again at 5–5, and then again at 6–6. I had thought that if I could stay in it this long I would have some sort of advantage, given that I am more likely to be found in the gym than Sainsbury’s. Most people find even a few games of singles tough, let alone twelve very long games with multiple deuces. But no, Karen looks as fresh as when we began, while I still feel a bit vomit-y. I can’t remember the rules for a tiebreaker and neither can Karen but when we ask the organizer, Margaret, she reminds us that there are no tiebreakers in this tournament. Someone simply has to go two games clear.

  Because this isn’t an official LTA (Lawn Tennis Association, Great Britain’s governing body for tennis) tournament, just a bit of fun (albeit with big shiny trophies), the changeovers are pretty relaxed. I go over to Rod. Still on the edge of his seat, he tells me to please finish it off. Can I perhaps hit the ball harder? Target her backhand? Hit more outright winners rather than waiting for her to make a mistake? Karen and I have now been playing for almost two hours. We have quite a big audience, which is usually good for me—I like to perform—except one of them is an old woman with a blanket over her knees who has a particularly loud cackle that has been putting me off. As I guzzle the horrible orange juice and water mixture recommended by my personal trainer, people say things about how long the game is and generally praise my grit and stamina.

  “I don’t know how you’re doing it,” says someone.

  “I think I’d die if it was me,” says someone else.

  But I am used to long, drawn-out things. I have just finished writing a novel, my ninth. I’m on sabbatical from the university job that recently seemed to be tipping me into alcoholism and mild obesity, and for the last few weeks my routine has been to write in the morning and then play tennis in the afternoon or the evening. It’s like the perfect life. I have my weekly coaching session with Dan on Thursdays. I try to use the ball machine one day a week and then lift weights once or twice. I do have some grit and stamina. But do I have enough?

  Back on court I lose a match point. I save a match point. Suddenly there are match points all over the place. We must be around 8–8 when one of my balls kisses the line and Karen calls it out. I’m pissed off but I know she is honest and nice, and if she saw it out, then she saw it out. Whatever. But it’s unfortunate because it takes the score to 30–40. Break point. But as I go back to serve, she calls to me. Perhaps it was in, she says. Now she thinks about it, she realizes she called wrong. On such an important point you have to be sure, right? Her honesty saves me. From there I go on to win 10–8.

  I am exhausted but there is still a lot of tournament left to play, especially as I’m down to play mixed doubles as well as singles. People are buying sausages and chips from the café in the leisure center upstairs and bringing them down on shiny white paper plates. Tim, my doubles partner, buys me tea in a Styrofoam cup, which has to be my changeover drink in the next match, which I realize is starting immediately. But I know that I can’t win at doubles as well as singles. Since I came back to tennis in July, I have had the same two annoying injuries: knees and lower back, the same injuries all recreational tennis players seem to get. Neither has been too bad lately, but I have to pace myself. One of my calves is starting to cramp a little bit. I am the stronger player in what we jokingly refer to as the “Dream Team” but I can’t give myself to this. Tim suffers badly from match nerves, knocking balls into the net that he would kill in practice. We lose our first match but at least my tea is nice.